Harry didn't wake up the next day until about mid morning. He was surprised that he did not have a hangover at all. As he sat up in his bed, he realised that he was in Sirius' old room. He then noted that there was a change of clothes laid out on a chair on the other side of the room. He quickly changed and went down to the kitchen to see if there was something he could get for breakfast.

Arcturus was already awake and was reading the Daily Prophet. He dropped the paper slightly and gave a slight chuckle. "I wondered how long you would sleep in. Apparently time travel followed by a long chat with more than a little wine did you in plenty."

Kreacher then showed up and set a plate of eggs and bacon in front of Harry and then promptly disappeared.

As Harry started to eat the meal put before him, he spoke to Arcturus. "I would just like to apologise to you, Lord Black."

Arcturus put down the paper. He narrowed his eyes at the young man sitting opposite to him. "First, don't call me Lord Black when it's just the two of us. Arcturus would be fine. Second, what in Merlin's name are you apologising for?"

Harry's eyes widened a little about being given permission to be more familiar with the man. "Well, first of all, for barging into your house the way I did."

Arcturus shook his head slightly. "Don't be foolish, young man. It will eventually be your home apparently. And besides, the wards here would have killed you or possibly done worse if they hadn't actually recognised you, a fact I thought I made more than clear last night." He frowned a little at that thought. "Still not sure exactly how that happened. Besides, you have given me a renewed purpose in my old age. I haven't felt this excited since your grandfather and I hunted down Grindelwald during the last great magical war."

Harry smiled in response. "I was wondering why you didn't hex me into oblivion when I landed at your feet that way."

Arcturus actually laughed slightly. "As I said, the wards would have detected an actual threat, so your appearance was more of a curiosity than anything else." After a moment he added, "Once you finish with your meal, Kreacher will take your measurements and get you some proper clothes. Then we will rejoin to the parlour and you will tell me what happened after you defeated the half blood poser who fooled all of those blood purists."

Soon Harry was seated across from Arcturus, and he felt that the man was much less intimidating this morning. He began to recount what had happened after he finished at school.

Harry explained that he had started dating his one time girlfriend, the younger sister of his best friend. But he soon discovered that Ginny had cheated on him. Apparently she did not like the fact he didn't want to have anything to do with his fame. She had pursued a career in Quidditch and soon became a famous Quidditch player. Then it was eventually found that she had been sleeping with other players when travelling with her team. The Daily Prophet had plenty of embarrassing photos of her to make the point more than clear.

Harry explained that he had not been enjoying his job as an Auror and that he had continued to have problems with working with the goblins. Breaking into a vault, stealing an item and even a dragon can cause difficulties with those who take such actions as an act of war, not to mention a slight on their reputation as being the safest bank in the world.

"No easy life in the post war world for the hero of all of magical England then," commented Arcturus.

"No, not really," he said, his face showing the fatigue he had felt after those first couple of years working as an Auror.

"But things started to change," he added. "I was assigned to investigate the death of a classmate, one Theodore Nott, heir to the Nott family. There were some unusual magical writings found near his body as well as an unidentified magical object. So I called in help form the Unspeakables. They sent one of the youngest members of their department, a witch, Daphne Greengrass, who also had been a classmate of mine at Hogwarts. Not that I really knew either one of them, Nott or Greengrass, as they were both in Slytherin and I was a Gryffindor."

"Of course you were," commented Arcturus with a smirk.

"So, Greengrass, Daphne, she arrived at the Nott Estate. She seemed to be angry with pretty much everyone. As we spoke about what had happened, she revealed to me that she at one point had been betrothed to Draco Malfoy."

Arcturus interrupted him, "He'll grow up to be no good, I'm sure, with that wanker of a father strutting around. Don't know why I allowed my son to arrange that betrothal for his daughter, Narcissa. I used to like her until she married that git."

Harry held back a laugh at the man's comments. "Well, as I was saying, Daphne, she had been betrothed to Malfoy and then she was betrothed to Nott. Malfoy had decided he wanted her younger sister. Nott wanted to take advantage of her while they were still in school, and when she wouldn't respond the way he wanted her to, well, he cursed her to never be able to have children."

Arcturus snorted at that comment. "Stupid short sighted pureblood idiot."

Harry nodded in agreement. "Well, after we met and reviewed what I had found, we worked together on the item. With her help, we discovered that the Nott family had been working on a means for time travel, more than just using time turners. From the writings we found in Nott's home office, it became clear that their goal was to go back in time and prevent the events of Halloween in 1981 from happening. They wanted to be the ones who would prevent my infant self from defeating the Dark Lord. However, every time someone had tried to travel through time beyond what using a time turner would allow, they all died. From the information that we were able to gather from the Nott family house elves, the body would disappear for a moment and then it reappeared having greatly aged and they were quite certainly dead."

Arcturus raised an eyebrow at what was revealed to him, but nodded slightly at Harry, encouraging him to continue with his tale.

"Well, Daphne reviewed what family writings could be found. And she concluded that Death itself would not allow anyone to travel across distances in time like they were trying to accomplish."

Harry let his comment sink in for a minute. "So then I asked her, 'What if someone was the 'master of death?' Would that change things?' Of course she initially thought I was bonkers, that I had gone round the twist."

"Initially?" questioned Arcturus.

Harry gave a slight smile to Arcturus before he continued. "My question to her remained, what if someone was the 'master of death'? That could change everything, or that is what I told her." Harry paused briefly before explaining further. "We researched this possibility together. Over time, the two of us, well, we grew close. Daphne, well, she was in tears one day when we met to review what we had learned. She was upset because she did not see any future for the two of us. She couldn't have children so she assumed that I would not have any interest in being with her, more than a work partner."

Arcturus ruminated as he silently waited for Harry to continue.

"I held her hands in mine, and I told her that maybe we can have a future together. If things were different, if things hadn't happened the way they had," said Harry.

"She looked at me, unbelieving. 'You can't possibly do that,' she asserted. I explained to her that it was, in fact, a possibility." Harry let his statement sink in for a moment, before he explained things further to Arcturus.

"I had an invisibility cloak from my father, it was apparently a family heirloom, owned by the Potters for many generations. I had become the master of the Elder Wand after disarming Draco Malfoy at the end of my sixth year at Hogwarts. That is a long story of how that became the important factor in everything else that happened. And before the end of the war against Riddle and his Death Eaters, I had obtained a ring, that had at one time been a family heirloom but passed down in a distant but related family."

Arcturus closed his mouth and shook his head slightly. "The Deathly Hallows? They're real? You have them?" He paused a moment before he continued. "You, you're the master of death," stated Arcturus without question. "That's how you managed to pull this off. Who would have guessed that an old children's bedtime story would be proven true."

Harry started to say something but Arcturus waved him off. "Of course there were always tales of the almighty Death Stick that was unbeatable, but obviously it did not grant invincibility to anyone whoever held it."

Arcturus laughed again, "You apparently survived the killing curse as an infant, and now you've grown to be the master of death, and have the ability to travel through time. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't heard it directly from you. And then that wouldn't have been enough except for one thing."

"And what is that one thing?" asked Harry, slightly stunned by the response of Arcturus.

"The wards, the simple fact you made it through the Black family wards. And you lived," said Arcturus with a grin. "I already told you, there was a reason why I let you live when you appeared. I needed to know the truth of how you managed to just fall into my home. And now it seems that I couldn't kill you even if I wanted to."

Harry smiled a little at the outburst from the old wizard, who seemed so much younger now than when he first was held by him at wand point the night before. "Well, I don't know if that would keep me alive, but I have managed to arrive here, and survive so far. Considering my home where I lived after the war ended and I had defeated Riddle was 12 Grimmauld Place."